David Geffen Quotes

This is between us! You know this is the best thing for the company.
David Geffen

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]
David Geffen

This thing is really silly. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, and I’m too powerful for you to hurt. I forgive you for all the times you’ve f*cked me in the past and for all the times you’re going to f*ck me in the future.
David Geffen

While several parties have expressed interest in buying the company, I’m not shopping it, I haven’t sold it and I’m not about to sell it.
David Geffen

You don’t know what the h*ll you’re talking about! You’re crazy!
David Geffen

I don’t care what their [Guns N’ Roses] record is. If you need a blood donor and the only person who can give you a transfusion is Hitler, you take the blood.
David Geffen

Are you threatening me? If you so much as touch me I’ll have you arrested!
David Geffen

I thought I’d be a success even back in the mailroom at William Morris. It was just inconceivable to me I couldn’t win it all.
David Geffen

[In 1990 on the president of MCA calling and saying ‘We’re going to make you the biggest offer this company has ever made, and I’m going to send it to you by messenger right now.’] It’s 1990. Send me a fax.
David Geffen

There are so many people who are trying to make it in the music business. It’s a very open business, more open I think than any other area of show business.
David Geffen

[In 1969] I thought how awful, this poor girl is being managed by someone who had no respect for her at all… I’ve been her agent since then.
David Geffen

That had her lip-syncing to a record… There was no protection for her as a person or as an artist…
David Geffen

[In 1969] I think lyrics have always been important to any serious writer of music.
David Geffen

Things that seemed simple and superfluous had some meaning, maybe it wasn’t a great meaning, it didn’t shake the world…
David Geffen

There were no role models, there were no other people I knew who were dealing with the same issues that I was dealing with. I had no idea if this was a stage I was going through or not. But I go to the draft board in Brooklyn and I fill out the form and there was a question that said ‘Do you have homosexual tendencies?’ and I check yes. But where-ever I was on line I’d see people I went to high school with and I was afraid of anyone knowing this about me so I kept on falling back into line and falling back into line. If you said you had homosexual tendencies they sent you to a psychiatrist. He said ‘I see here you’ve checked the box?’ And I said ‘yup’. He said ‘So do you think you’d have a problem serving in the armed forces?’ I said well you know ‘So many men.’ And I was out of the service.
David Geffen

I quickly figured out [that] the one ability I’d better have is to create relationships.
David Geffen

I never felt I was too protective. I felt I was functioning as a dam against the river of sh*t that comes pouring down on artists, and it was a job that I took very seriously.
David Geffen

[On Lou Adler] Lou really had a production deal called a label, whereas we had a real label. We had a great many artists, whereas he had very few. Lou also produced most of the stuff that came out on Ode. We were not producers.
David Geffen

In my experience, there was never anything quite like the egos in CSNY.
David Geffen

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.
David Geffen

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.
David Geffen

[In 1972] At the moment, we’re getting the same thrill from seeing the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Jo Jo Gunne, and Judee Sill happen… It’s as hard to do it with Jackson Browne as it was to do it with Joni five years ago.
David Geffen

[To his ex-entertainment lawyer Eric Eisner who resigned from the presidency of The David Geffen Company in 1991 just as a deal was about to be made with some Japanese] Keep your stock. [Eric sold it.]
David Geffen

This Velvet Mafia thing is just another homophobic, nasty kind of thing that jealous queens make up.
David Geffen

I have one job in the world now and that’s to make him happy! And you’re putting me in a position where I cannot make him happy! [‘David, stop screaming.’] I’m not screaming! [Yelling]
David Geffen

Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.
David Geffen

Of course it scored well! It was all fags and old people!
David Geffen

Oh please. A Gay Mafia? This is so crazy. This is insane. I think he needs a psychiatrist. It’s so paranoid, and so crazy, and so irresponsible, and makes him look like such a nut. It’s beyond crazy. On a scale of 1 to 10 crazy, it’s 11… He’s made a fool of himself, and he’s made a huge failure of his life. To say you’ve been brought down by the Gay Mafia and its allies is as crazy as anything I’ve ever heard in my life… Did I mention his extraordinary homophobia?
David Geffen

If you’re successful, people will talk about you. There’s nothing you can do about it. People make up stories.
David Geffen

There has always been a tremendous obsession with television and movie stars, and with the people involved with the business.
David Geffen

[In 1994] I wouldn’t offer $5 million to stop a book about me! It’s absurd. People will do anything for attention.
David Geffen

[On his donation of $100 million to UCLA in 2012 adding to the $200 million he donated in 2002] The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue. We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt. I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same.
David Geffen

I don’t think people get to be successful without ambition. And I don’t think people get to be successful unless they have very strong egos.
David Geffen

The think I remember most about Brooklyn was how much I wanted to get out of Brooklyn.
David Geffen

[On leaving Brooklyn] I left the day I graduated high school.
David Geffen

I was sleeping on a couch in my brothers apartment, and one day this guy walked over and said ‘How would you like to be in a movie?’ And I said ‘Yeah!’ I was an extra in ‘Explosive Generation’.
David Geffen